Practical Handbook for Product Developers – First Steps: Idea, Validation, MVP – Best Practices for Defining and Planning an MVP
A practical summary of everything we covered in the “First Steps” section — the principles, mindsets, and techniques that help teams build an MVP that ships fast and sets an effective foundation.
Hello, developers! 🚀
Welcome back to the Learn Agile Practices newsletter, your weekly dose of insights to power up your software development journey through Agile Technical Practices and Methodologies!
📚 Previous on this series
⏩ Section 1 - First steps: Idea, Validation, MVP
1️⃣ Chapter 1 – How to Decide What Goes In and What Stays Out of the MVP
2️⃣ Chapter 2 – Simple Solutions First
3️⃣ Chapter 3 – Fake it ‘till You make it
4️⃣ Chapter 4 – Validating the problem/opportunity or the solution?
5️⃣ Chapter 5 – Prioritizing Features (with Stakeholders)
6️⃣ Chapter 6 – Implementing core and nice to have features
7️⃣ Chapter 7 – Managing internal expectations
8️⃣ Chapter 8 – Keeping MVP Scope Alive While Building
9️⃣ Chapter 9 – Best Practices for Defining and Planning an MVP → You’re here.
1️⃣0️⃣ Chapter 10 – Working skeleton: pipeline first → Coming on January 13th, the first chapter of the new section: Building the MVP!
🧭 Follow the journey: each issue is a micro-chapter of the series: Practical Handbook for Product Developers — released weekly.
🔎 Why an MVP Needs Method, Not Guesswork
Planning an MVP is not about shrinking a big product idea into a small version.
It’s about identifying the minimum set of features that validate the solution, delivered in the fastest, simplest, most learning-oriented way possible.
Over the past chapters, we explored the decisions that make or break this process.
This final issue summarises them into a set of actionable best practices — a checklist you can return to any time you start a new product or feature initiative.
🧭 Best Practices for Defining and Planning an MVP
Here’s the complete toolkit we’ve explored so far.
1. Start with the problem, not the product
Before thinking about features, validate that:
The problem is real
It is painful
It happens often enough
The target users care
There’s a clear opportunity to solve it
Use low-cost validation: interviews, simple landing pages, surveys, manual workflows, ads, and AI-assisted insight clustering.
Do not define the solution until the problem is strong and proven.
2. Make your hypothesis explicit
Every MVP begins with:
“We believe that [segment] has [problem], and that [solution] will solve it.”
If this cannot be formulated clearly, the MVP will fail by definition.
This is your compass for every decision.
3. Identify the core feature (and keep it sacred)
The core feature is the one action the user must take to experience the product’s value.
Everything else is supporting detail.
Rules:
If it does not directly validate the hypothesis → it’s out
If it can be postponed → postpone it
If it can be simplified → simplify it
A bloated MVP is not an MVP.
4. Separate core features from nice-to-haves
A simple but powerful rule:
Core = essential to validation
Nice-to-have = everything else
Nice-to-haves don’t belong in an MVP.
If you really must include one, build the simplest possible version and expect to rebuild it later.
5. Use the “fake it till you make it” principle intentionally
Automation is expensive.
Validation is cheap.
Any non-critical operational flow can initially be:
Manual (email, spreadsheet, form submission)
Semi-automated (Zapier, n8n, Make, Bubble, Softr)
Simulated (Wizard-of-Oz prototype)
Every hour you don’t spend on early automation is an hour you can spend learning.
6. Choose technologies that maximise speed and feedback
The best tech stack for an MVP is the one the team can:
Build quickly
Maintain without effort
Deploy continuously
Adapt without friction
Throw away if needed
Use tools you know, explore new technologies only if they significantly reduce time-to-learn.
Keep architecture minimal and reversible.
7. Build an architecture that can evolve
The architecture itself can be an MVP — a walking skeleton:
One repo
One deploy pipeline
One vertical slice working end-to-end
Minimal abstractions
Everything replaceable
Avoid premature modularisation, microservices, or heavy orchestration.
You don’t need scale before having users.
8. Prioritise by impact, not effort
Effort estimates do not help prioritisation.
Impact (on validation) is the only variable that matters.
A feature that requires a week can be more important than one that takes a day if it’s essential to proving the solution.
Impact decides order.
Effort only informs slicing.
9. Keep scope alive throughout development
Scope is not a static document.
It’s a hypothesis that evolves through daily learning.
To keep it alive:
Turn standups into alignment sessions, not status reports
Re-evaluate priorities continuously
Update the scope weekly
Cut scope as soon as risks or delays appear
Replace expensive features with manual or low-code versions when needed
Sticking to outdated scope is not discipline — it’s waste.
10. Communicate constantly and transparently
Internal alignment is a core part of MVP success.
Use:
A lightweight public roadmap
A simple idea intake process
Weekly learning updates
Decision logs (reversible vs irreversible choices)
Shared expectations with stakeholders
Clarity reduces noise, prevents scope creep, and keeps focus on validation.
11. Slice features vertically
A thin vertical slice is always better than multiple incomplete horizontal layers.
Each slice should include:
Minimum UI
Minimum backend
Minimum workflow
Full deployment path
If it doesn’t run end-to-end, it doesn’t teach you anything.
12. Document decisions, not just features
A good MVP doc includes:
The hypothesis
The core feature
The IN/OUT list
The rationale behind exclusions
Scope changes over time
Reversible vs irreversible decisions
What you expect to learn
Documentation builds confidence, alignment, and speed.
🎁 Outro — End of Year & Teaser for What’s Next
With this chapter, we close the first section of the Practical Handbook:
First Steps: Idea, Validation, MVP.
We talked about problem validation, core features, prioritisation, fake-it-till-you-make-it, scope management, and everything needed to plan an MVP that delivers learning instead of waste.
After the holidays, we’ll enter the second section:
“Building the MVP”
where we’ll go hands-on with topics like:
Walking Skeletons: getting your first end-to-end flow running
Architecture That Can Evolve: making choices that don’t trap you
Releasing in Thin Slices: shipping value continuously
Simplifying Without Lowering Quality: how TDD and CI help MVP velocity
How to Avoid Over-engineering During Build
A different section, with more examples, more code, and more real product stories.
Have a great end of the year — see you in January with the next chapter.